Monday, February 6, 2012

Amar'e Out; Jeffries and Lin In

First, some grave news. Amar'e Stoudemire's brother, Hazell, was killed in car accident early this morning. Amar'e is traveling down to Orlando to be with his family and will miss tonight's game. In that linked article, Mike D'Antoni says Amar'e may take as much times as he needs, which is the courteous thing to do. Obviously, we all send our condolences to Amar'e and his family. What a tragedy.

Because of Amar'e's absence, Jared Jeffries will get the start tonight against the Utah Jazz. But along with Jared, there will be another new addition to the starting lineup tonight! Via Howard Beck:

Reports from Knicks shootaround are that Jeremy Lin will get his first start tonight, with Jeffries replacing the absent Stoudemire.

Hey, congratulations, Jeremy! The unreasonable Knicks fan in me is extremely excited to watch Lin tonight and I'm very curious to see how he'll play now with that his adrenaline isn't pumping like crazy. However, the reasonable human within me (somewhere) is trying to tamper expectations. It appears Shumpert will move to the bench, so we'll see how long D'Antoni leaves Lin in before going to Shump or Toney Douglas.